Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to computer systems, and more particularly to cloud file storage systems. Even more particularly, this invention relates to synchronizing a local file system and a cloud file system stored remotely from the local file system.
Description of the Background Art
Cloud computing systems are known. In cloud computing systems, computing and storage services are provided to remote clients over a wide area network such as the Internet. In the case of storage, a client's local files can be stored on the cloud and accessed by the client remotely.
Often a client's file system will exist both in the client's local storage device (e.g., a hard drive, network attached storage (NAS) device, etc.) and in the cloud. For example, a client might store a backup copy of its local file system in the cloud. Doing so is beneficial from the standpoint that the client has a backup copy of its file system. However, any benefit of the backup is negated as more and more changes are made to the local file system. Thus, it becomes a burden on the client to make sure the file system stored on the cloud is up to date. It is common for the file system on the cloud to be significantly older than the local file system, putting the local file system at risk if it is damaged.
For large file systems, the time needed to copy the local file system to the cloud, or vice versa, can be very long, for example, on the order of days to more than a week. Often the cloud file system and/or the local file system will be unavailable during this time. This is very problematic for clients, especially when files are needed sooner e.g., for remote presentations, collaboration with others, etc. File system downtime can also repeat if future copies of the file system(s) need to be made.
What is needed, therefore, is a system and method that facilitates efficiently synchronizing a client's local file system with its file system on the cloud. What is also needed is a system and method that facilitates such synchronization in near real time and provides access to the synchronized file systems quickly.